A Garden at the End of the World
by Hefeweizen
Summary: The team is hunted down one by one after the Fischer job.  Ariadne looks for answers across multiple dream realities, but reality itself is coming unraveled. Eventual Ariadne/ Cobb.
1. Chapter 1

Quick note: Arthur, Cobb, and Ariadne have the largest roles in time, but everyone will get some screen time. Romance? Maybe.

* * *

Ariadne stood in long grass that swayed in the late afternoon light. It was the golden hour, the perfect time just before sunset. A warm sea breeze gently moved the humid air.

She walked forward until she left the grassy dunes and reached the wet sand of the beach. The powerful surf rolled in and out against the shore, ending in sudsy sea foam that was saffron-colored in the golden light. She curled her toes in the sand and thought about what spending eternity here would feel like.

The slanting sunlight cast long shadows from the individual grains of sand, a tiny study in chiaroscuro, and a little bird scurried across it, avoiding the sea foam.

The gun was still warm in her hand.

* * *

Everything was blurry at first, but slowly Yusuf's face came into focus. He was fiddling with something at her wrist, frowning and furrowing his brows.

"What are you doing?" said Ariadne.

He smiled quickly and awkwardly patted her hand. "Hey stranger. Nice of you to finally wake up."

"He's worried," she thought. "But he's trying to hide if for my sake." She felt groggy and out of sorts, but her heart beat wildly.

"Yusuf, did you drug me?"

"I had to... sorry. The timer ran out, the kick didn't work, and you were still asleep. Finally I resorted to amphetamines. It was my last choice."

Ariadne pulled the needle from her wrist and Yusuf handed her a glass of water. She rubbed her eyes and said, "Thanks, I guess. But what about them?" Across the room, Cobb and Saito slept fitfully.

"They won't wake," he said softly.

Ariadne felt dizzy and nauseous, and the room blurred. She gripped her totem and took deep slow breaths. She stood the bishop on the arm of the chair, and it fell the right way.

She took a closer look at the unfamiliar room. It was night; a wall of windows gave her a panoramic view of flickering city lights and the ocean far below. They were at the top of a large hill or a small mountain. The room had white walls and was lit by sconces that cast a warm, diffuse glow. The floor was tiled in black and white, and furnished with comfortable black leather couches.

"Where are we?" said Ariadne.

Yusuf frowned. "Memory loss. I had to use a new cocktail for this job, and I'm still learning about the aftereffects. Like them." He glanced nervously over his shoulder.

"I'm sorry, but a job-? What job?" she said, but he was already across the room, checking on another patient.

An unfamiliar man paced the floor in front of the window. He often glanced nervously at Saito as he slept, but never turned to face Ariadne.

Mal entered the room and went to Cobb's side. The warm light turned her skin the color of honey, and she wore a soft cream-colored dress. She caressed his face from

temple to jaw and took a shaky breath.

"I'm so sorry, Dom. We failed you," she whispered, her voice breaking. She bit her lip and tears welled up in her eyes.

Ariadne choked back a sob. She was overwhelmed all the sudden, but the emotions were all wrong. Maybe part of it was longing. Sometimes dreams are like that, she thought- irrational, but still powerful.

Mal slowly rose from Cobb's side and locked eyes with Ariadne. Her gaze was piercing.

Ariadne woke with a start.

* * *

Track list: Ariadne on the beach: She- Orbit


	2. Chapter 2

Ariadne woke with a start. She glanced at the digital clock by her bed; it was 5:13 AM. She was in a hotel by the airport in Los Angeles, resting before her connecting flight to Paris, because she had to be back for finals as soon as the job was over. She sat up in bed, flicked on the bedside light, and stood her bishop on end on the bedside table. It fell the right way, and she let out a shaky breath.

A few minutes later Ariadne knocked on Arthur's door. "It's me," she said. "Can I come in?"

After a small wait, Arthur answered the door in rumpled slacks and a white t-shirt, looking uncharacteristically tousled. His mouth quirked up into a small grin.

"You probably think I'm crazy, waking you like this," she said sheepishly.

"Not at all." He surpressed the grin and motioned her inside. "Well, come on in. Make yourself comfortable."

She followed him into the room and sat on the bed. She always noticed the smooth embroidered fabric of hotel furniture. It was one of those details, like the garish patterned carpeting or the heavy drapes, that seemed to be a constant in big corporate hotels like this one. If you've stayed at one, you've stayed at them all, she thought.

"Actually, Arthur, I wanted to ask you a question," she ventured.

"Sure. Can I get you a drink, though? You kind of look like you could use one." Ariadne nodded and Arthur went to the mini-bar and busied himself making two vodka tonics.

Ariadne took a deep breath. "So my question is… Is there any way a totem could lie? Or that it could be wrong?"

He handed her the drink and looked at her thoughtfully. "Can you elaborate?"

"I had a- what I thought was a dream, but anyway, most of the team was there. Yusuf woke me. Fischer was pacing around by the window, but I didn't realize that was weird. Yusuf said he tried all kinds of things to wake us up, and nothing worked. Saito and Cobb were both asleep. Mal leaned over him and said, "we have failed," then she turned and looked at me- like, looked _through _me. Then I woke up." She took a tentative sip of her drink- it was vodka with a splash of soda, a drink to knock you off your feet.

Arthur took a long sip of his drink. "Hmm. That is uncanny, but it's common to have dreams that echo the job for a few nights after. That sort of thing bothers me, so I have a drink or two after a job. Alcohol makes it harder for you have deep REM sleep, so no dreams."

"Riiight. Alcoholic says what?"

He stuck his tongue out at her and took another swig for emphasis. She rolled her eyes.

After a few moments, Arthur sat next to her on the bed. "Okay, so you still haven't told me what's up with the totem."

Ariadne hugged her knees to her chest. "I just- Mal being in my dream wasn't even the crazy thing. My totem in my dream acted like it was real. Then I woke up and tested my totem again here and it was the same. How could that be? I mean, if it turned out that I was dreaming here and that was the real world… I'd be cool with _that,_ because at least I'd be sure. But this…" She shrugged.

Arthur rubbed his chin pensively. "What if you dreamed that you made a totem? Then it would consistently work within that dream, right?"

"Yeah, but… If that's true, then why even have one? I mean, anyone who has a totem has to remember making one. So the whole idea of totems is flawed, right?" She reflexively gripped the bishop in her pocket, and looked out the window and drank a few more sips while considering this idea. "Of course I remember making my totem," she thought. "I just haven't thought about it in a while because there's so much going on. Cobb taught me about totems, didn't he?"

The sun was rising, but Arthur's room faced west, toward the Pacific. A pale, thin light started to grow outside, and there were faint glimmers on the ocean.

Ariadne realized that Arthur had been talking for a few minutes and came back to reality. "… but it's still the best reality check we have. There are other things you can do, but you have to make a habit of applying logic to your surroundings. Look at a clock, and then look at it again to make sure it shows the same time. Or try to look at yourself in the mirror. Normally details like that escape us in a dream."

"You said normally. If there's nothing that works one hundred percent of the time, then how can I know for sure if I'm awake?"

"You just have to take a leap of faith."

"This Fischer job really took us down the rabbit hole, huh?"

"I wondered about the same stuff when I was new. Reality hasn't changed, you're just aware of the possibilities now." Arthur walked to the mini bar to fix another drink. "Want one? All this talk is making me thirsty."

She shook her head. "I'm ok. You know… you could be a projection then, right?"

Arthur extended his arm and looked at his hand intently. "Well, I feel real. I know there's an "I" in here to answer your questions."

"Is that something a projection of you would say?" she asked skeptically.

"Probably," Arthur deadpanned. "Then again, I could be the dreamer and you could be the projection. Put _that_ in your pipe and smoke it."

Ariadne snorted. "So I knock at your hotel room late at night and we… talk philosophy, right? Your subconscious is kind of stuffy."

"If it were my dream, we wouldn't just be talking. I'm a healthy young man, you know. " He took a sip of vodka tonic and smiled slyly behind the glass.

Ariadne ignored him, stood and paced. "Arthur, I just realized. You weren't there in my dream earlier. Here, all the others are gone. It seems like that's significant somehow." She glanced at him uneasily and there was a long moment of silence.

Suddenly the door exploded inward. The blast sent them flying in a shower of wood chips, smoke, glass, and vodka tonic. A spray of gunfire erupted around them.

"Get behind the bed!" Arthur yelled, and Ariadne ran for it, ducking and covering her head with her hands. He dropped to the floor and crawled to the bedside stand, fumbled in the drawer and pulled out a pistol. The hallway outside was still full of smoke and debris, but he took a shot and there was a cry from outside.

He tossed her the pistol. "Cover me, all right? I'm going to get us out of here."

Outside the window, a tidal wave gathered on the horizon, clean and precise. The water glistened in the early morning daylight. It grew and grew until it loomed over the hotel. It stayed there, seemingly suspended in time. A bulled lodged itself in the wall behind them. Ariadne glanced fearfully out the window and back to the hallway. Using the bed for cover, she aimed, fired, and a man fell heavily across the doorway. The kickback was fierce. She had used a gun before, but it never stopped feeling strange to hold something so lethal.

Arthur crawled around to Ariadne's side of the bed and they fearfully locked eyes for a moment. A bullet zinged over the top of the bed and hit the wall behind them. He squeezed her hand.

"Don't worry. I've got you covered," she said, and aimed again. She ducked to avoid a bullet, and then took a shot and missed. Arthur nimbly reached up and undid a latch at the top of the window. The glass folded outward until it was paralell to the ground.

"You ready?" he said, and stepped onto the glass. He held out a hand and helped her onto the windowsill. Ariadne couldn't help but pause.

A glass walkway made out of endless window panes stretched ahead of them, seventeen stories above the ground. Ahead of them, the tidal wave was still suspended in time, looking like glass in the early morning light. The path cut right through it. Ariadne looked down at the hotel parking lot and saw men with guns pouring out of unmarked vans. Arthur gripped her hand and they started to run.


	3. Chapter 3

It was morning. She was in the white-tiled room, and Saito and Cobb were still asleep across from her. Saito stirred in his sleep and moaned. Ariadne still felt dizzy and weak, but finally clearheaded. She leaned heavily on the arms of her chair to stand up, and staggered over to Cobb's sleeping form.

"Hey, you," she said, squeezing in next to him on the chair. "Are you in there?"

His eyelids fluttered, but showed no other sign of coming out of his deep sleep. He breathed slowly and regularly.

"Figures," she sighed. She gave in to a compulsion that she'd been fighting for a while, and reached out to touch him. She ran a hand down his face, brushing her fingertips over his lips. She straightened the collar of his button-down shirt and traced her hand down his chest.

There was a scrap of paper in his shirt pocket. She folded it and tucked it into the cuff of her jacket.

Footsteps from the other room. Ariadne steadied herself and made her way back to her recliner. She closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep.

Mal was leaning over her. She sat up with a genuine show of effort, because she still felt dizzy and weak.

"Mal, will you help me up?"

"Of course, dear." Mal beamed and squeezed Ariadne's hand. Ariadne stood gingerly and leaned on Mal for support. Mal squeezed her hand and guided her out to the terrace, with its steep drop and view of the city and ocean beyond.

Mal smiled warmly. "I hoped you would wake for breakfast. It would be a shame for you to miss a morning like this." A fresh, humid breeze blew in from the sea, and the sky was the clear, fresh-scrubbed periwinkle that follows a rainstorm. A table on the terrace was set with coffee in a French press, fresh berries, honey, cream, and crepes.

"This looks great, Mal. I'm starving." Ariadne tucked in and Mal sipped coffee from a porcelain cup. A heavy silence fell over them, now that they were out of small talk.

Mal spoke up first. "We have been close, haven't we, Ariadne? In the years we have worked together…" There was a softness to her voice.

Ariadne remembered her first lesson in dream architecture. She followed Mal up a flight of creaky wooden stairs dusted with snow, leading to the second-story door of a small tudor-style house. Mal's skirts were long, but never brushed the snow. Inside, the space was huge- room upon room of gleaming wood floors, marble columns, and archeological oddities like old fossils or perpetual motion devices. Heavy velvet curtains framed huge picture windows, and the cool, wintery light filtered in.

Ariadne smiled slyly with the realization of Mal's cleverness. "Mal, is this house bigger on the inside than on the outside?"

"You're pretty fast. Can you do better?"

Ariadne created a room where there had been a wall before. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves slid out of the walls, and in the center of the room a huge amethyst crystal grew and branched out like a tree.

"Hm. A room is a little pedestrian. Can you make me a labyrinth ?"

So Ariadne thought long and hard and built room upon room in the tiny house. She and Mal toured the rooms and got completely lost. Mal laughed, delighted, as they walked through the gothic rooms together. They laughed and joked and traded academic theories until they finally found their way out of the house. Then they stood outside in the snow, arm in arm, and looked at the tiny house.

"Does anyone else know about this?" said Ariadne.

Mal smiled mischievously. "Now _that_ would be telling."

It was only natural that Mal would recruit the best student from her father's class. They had worked closely together for five years.

Ariadne thought about this and answered Mal honestly. "You're like a sister to me." She thought, "Better, even. We know each other inside and out."

Their eyes met and she realized Mal had been scrutinizing her. Mal said, "Then why dream of killing each other? Is there some unspoken point of contention between us? I have something you want?"

Ariadne involuntarily thought of Cobb asleep in his chair. "No," said Ariadne, too quickly.

Mal moved in and out of focus. Ariadne didn't feel so well.


	4. Chapter 4

Thank you for the reviews, totallyPSYCHED, StrangeLittleSwirl, Madj, and Coocachew! This is my first story- I really appreciate it.

* * *

Someone slapped Ariadne hard across the face. "Hey!" she cried, startled, and slapped them back.

Arthur clutched his cheek and winced. "Guess I asked for it… ow! Come on, let's keep moving."

"Why'd you hit me?" She said, as they broke into a jog. The panes of window glass disappeared behind them as they ran.

He looked at her strangely. "You dozed off for a minute there. You don't remember?"

"Um… no? I just remember running here."

"Yeah, well, I tried pulling your arm to make you run, but you just ground to a halt. Then I tried shaking you, but I was afraid you'd fall. This isn't really the place for falling. That wave is about to hit." They were still seventeen stories up on the glass walkway, but out over the open ocean.

From below them, there was a noise like a giant drain followed by a deep rumble. "Hit the deck!" he said sharply, and they dropped to the floor.

Ariadne unlatched the window pane ahead of them and swung it up to a vertical position. They huddled behind it and the glass began to creak and moan. The crest of the wave crashed against their shelter and soaked them with sea foam and spray. It roared past, toward the city behind them.

"It's going to demolish the city. That should take care of pursuit for a while. We might want to pick up the pace, though," he said, glancing behind them nervously.

They jogged faster and the panes of glass turned at a right angle ahead of them. Deep grey clouds gathered on the horizon ahead of them, and the cool maritime breeze turned into a stiff wind.

Arthur swore. Three people stood on the walkway ahead, guns ready.

The only woman in the group stepped to the front. "Drop your weapons!" she yelled. She was a young Asian woman with short hair, wearing a charcoal-grey suit. Her colleagues were both young men in conservative suits; one man had straight black hair and one had short brown hair.

Arthur stepped in front of Ariadne, blocking her from the line of fire, and raised his hands. "Okay, you win. I'm setting it down." he called back. To Ariadne he muttered, "There's another gun at my belt. Can you get it?"

"Sure," she said softly. "I have a plan. Brace yourself, okay?" The wind gusted, lifting their hair and carrying snowflakes past them. The snow began to fall harder, and turned to slush when it hit the glass.

Arthur gingerly set down the gun he was holding. As he bent down, his shirt lifted up in back, revealing a gun tucked into his belt. Ariadne marveled at his paranoia even though he had been right. Who carried a gun on their person and kept one in the bedside table?

She slipped the gun out of his belt, making sure the three people on the walkway couldn't see her hands. Suddenly, blades of ice jutted up through the glass where the group stood.

Plates of razor-sharp glass exploded outward and sliced the dark-haired man across the face. The other man was blasted off his feet and fell to the water.

The woman lost her footing and skidded to the edge of the glass. Her body went over the side, but she managed a handhold on the sharp edge.

Ariadne twisted to the left and fired a shot past Arthur. The bullet hit with percussive force, and the man with the cut face staggered and clutched his chest.

Arthur dove for his gun on the ground. The dying man fired, and Arthur cried out and fell to the ground. Blood flowed freely from his shoulder, but he turned the fall into a roll.

The dark-haired man moaned and then staggered and fell to the ground. "Suraj!" cried the woman, and tried to reach for him. She bit her lip and tears welled up in her eyes.

Meanwhile Ariadne aimed her gun at the woman on the glass. The gun shook in her hands. With an effort of pure will, the young woman hauled herself onto the glass by her bloody hands, watching Ariadne intently. She lay prone on the glass, panting with effort, her legs still dangling over the edge. Ariadne stared at her, transfixed, and couldn't shoot.

Arthur traded his gun from his useless left arm to the right. He sighted the woman and pulled the trigger- there was the click of an empty chamber. "Ariadne, what are you doing? Fire, damn it!" he said.

Ariadne held the gun and took deep breaths to steady herself. The woman's hand twitched.

Bam! Arthur was blasted off his feet. His body twisted in the air and arced gracefully as he fell. He went over the edge and hit the water far below.

"No!" cried Ariadne. The woman on the glass smiled wearily- she held the gun of her fallen comrade. She held the gun to her temple and fired. The shot rang out and the woman disappeared. Ariadne sobbed and emptied the gun into the empty space. The cold wind whipped her hair as she stood alone over the grey ocean.


	5. Chapter 5

Thank you, Swampophelia and Atlantisgirl12! Swampophelia, you have an awesome pen name.

Ariadne took deep, shuddering breaths and the icy wind froze her tears to her face. She looked over the empty horizon, the jutting ice, and the broken glass and fought to calm down and think rationally. She had so many questions. It would be easy to jump and end it, but the answers could be in this dream somewhere.

"Okay, what do I know?" she said aloud. "I'm in a dream. I can't trust my totem, which means I can't trust reality. So scratch that- I am probably in a dream." She sighed. "This place sucks. I wish I were…"

She turned around and found herself in Paris.

"… home?" She was standing on a pane of glass outside the window of her apartment. It was an early morning in Spring. Birds were singing and delicious smells wafted up from the pastry shop on the ground floor.

She creaked open the window and clambered over her windowsill, landing on her living room couch.

Gentle snores came from her roommate's bedroom, so Ariadne tiptoed through the apartment. She suddenly felt overwhelmingly weary.

She walked down a crowded dusty road in the bright mid-day sunlight. The way was lined with stucco buildings with red tiled roofs, and a cool sea breeze lifted her hair.

Two men were having a heated argument at one of the outdoor cafés . Ariadne couldn't come close enough to see them, without being seen herself.

"- and I am telling you, something is very wrong. I've had three near misses in the last week-"

"I appreciate your concerns, but you can't just come running to me whenever you're a little worried. When we gather, it draws attention."

"I'm not asking for help. I'm telling you to look out for yourself!"

"I'm a big boy, Yusuf. I can take care-"

A double-decker bus swerved up the road. It jumped the curb and folded into the café like an accordion. There was a deafening crash and the squeal of twisted metal.

Everything was screams, smoke, and chaos.

Yusuf tumbled to the sidewalk in front of Ariadne, coughing. There was a long gash in his side and a burn on his neck.

"You?" he said, taken aback. She rushed to his side and slung his arm over her shoulder.

He coughed violently. "Eames was- with me- help-"

They hobbled over to a clear bench, and she helped Yusuf sit down. "When this is all over… tell me what you're doing here," he said hoarsely.

"It's a date," she said and clasped his hand briefly before running back to the café. She frantically dug through the debris, and threw aside the fender of the bus and a portion of stucco wall.

Eames lay prone under a collapsed section of wall. "Fancy… meeting you here," he said weakly. His face was scraped and bloodied, but he still had that boyish smirk.

"Jesus, Eames… let me help you…"

Sirens wailed in the distance, and the smoke thickened. The building was on fire.

"Looks like my mortal coil has been shuffled. Bring me that rum, would you, love? I always said I'd go out with a drink in my hand."

"I don't like this side of you. Put your arms around my neck."

"You want to cuddle, baby? I'm all yours." His eyelids fluttered closed.

"Eames! Stop being delirious and do it! NOW!"

He wrapped his right arm around her and she struggled to lift him and drag him to the street. They had to stop every few steps. Eames' shirt was soaked with blood and drops of his blood fell to the dusty street. He leaned heavily on her shoulder and his stubble brushed her neck.

"I'm rather fond of this chip, can I bet my watch instead?" he muttered.

She gripped him by the shoulders and slapped him hard across the face. "_Eames! _Where are we?"

His eyes focused. "In a bloody maelstrom."

"Right you are." She wrapped his arms around her neck again and continued dragging him.

"Darling… what is that wonderful scent you're wearing?" he said drowsily.

She blushed, but said, "We can talk about that later. Right now I need you to focus. Yusuf made a comment about near misses. Can you think of any enemies?"

"Hm? Ask the fat man… he mentioned some kind of cabal..."

They reached the bench, but Yusuf was gone. Ariadne helped the barely-conscious Eames lay down.

She shaded her eyes and looked into the bright African sun. When she looked away, the scene around her was completely different.


	6. Chapter 6

When she looked away, the scene around her was completely different.

She sat reading a book at a café by the waterfront. The sun was setting on the water, and colorful lights were strung up over the patio.

Robert Fischer approached the table. "Mind if I join you?" he said.

"How did you find me? I didn't tell anyone where I was going," she said, setting down the book.

"I don't mean to intrude," he said diffidently.

Ariadne sighed. She was fond of him, but sometimes she got tired of bolstering his fragile self-esteem. "Rob, I'm always glad for your company. I just meant, did Mal put you up to this? She can be such a worrywart."

Mal walked up to the table with three beers. "She can, huh?" she said with a smile. "By the way, Saito is up. He left this morning with barely a word."

"Following you was my idea," Fischer said quickly. "You've barely been awake since the job. I saw your car gone and wanted to be sure you were safe. But I can't say Mal wasn't worried either."

Mal took a seat and smiled winsomely. "He lies. I just fancied a drink, but he worried like an old grandmother."

Fischer shrugged apologetically. Ariadne looked bemusedly at the two of them.

Mal picked up Ariadne's book. "Haruki Murakami?" Mal said casually. "Fitting, I guess."

Fischer examined the cover with interest. "Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World? What is it?"

Ariadne shot Mal a furitive glance. "It's about a man who gets trapped in his own subconscious."

"There is a little paper sticking out of your sleeve," said Mal.

"Hm?" Ariadne blushed. She'd taken that paper from Cobb's pocket earlier, when she'd touched him in his sleep. Why had she possibly done that? It was a huge invasion of his privacy and Mal's trust. "Just a note I scribbled to myself."

Fischer changed the subject. "Mal's come up with a new plan. We start tonight."

"Great, what can I do?" said Ariadne.

Mal's expression softened. "Well, the thing is, dear…"

Fischer cut in. "It was decided- I mean, we both think, and Yusuf agrees-"

Ariadne frowned. "I can't go with you?"

"It would be too big a risk," said Mal. "How much of the last job do you remember?"

"I don't remember doing a job with either of you," said Ariadne truthfully.

Mal and Fischer shared a darkly significant look.

"We went very deep into dreams," said Fischer. "There were some unintended side effects."

"Like what?"

Mal said, "Some of us… lost the awareness that we were dreaming. Me, for one. But I still can't fully explain my troubling behavior in there."

"Dom's subconscious may have played a part," said Fischer.

Mal smiled sadly at Fischer. "Rob never lost track of reality or the mission. He played his role faithfully to the very end, until you pushed him off that building."

"I'm lost," said Ariadne.

"Let me start from the very beginning," said Mal. "Three days ago we completed a job for a very powerful employer, but things did not go as planned. Dom never woke up."

Mal continued. "So, Ariadne, you and I hatched an unprecedented scheme. We would enter Dom's dream posing as an extraction team. This would let him complete the job- then the dream would end and he'd wake up. Rob and Saito were essential. Saito offered the job, and Rob played the mark."

Fischer cut in. "Saito and I run this con a lot. It's never failed us before."

Mal sighed. "Everything went wrong. We went deep into dreams to find Dom, and somewhere along the way we lost track of reality. We thought the dream was real and acted out our roles. Dom never woke up, and we lost you and Saito to the dream world as well."

"You didn't 'lose' me, said Ariadne heatedly.

"Quick question, then. How old are you?" Mal said.

"Um…" Ariadne remembered being in her first year of graduate school in Paris. She bit her lip. "I'm twenty-two."

"Wrong," Mal said firmly. "You're twenty-six. You started working with me five years ago."

"_That's_ implausible," said Ariadne.

Mal continued. "It was your idea to be a student in the dream. You would act as a wide-eyed outsider and let Dom recruit and teach you. Dom would think he was in charge, and never suspect you of planting an idea in his head. But then you forgot you were in a dream. You were supposed to make him realize his world wasn't real. Instead you made him accept the dream completely. You helped him give me up. I believe you acted in good faith based on what you knew. In a way that makes it harder, because I can't be angry with you."

Ariadne looked to Fischer for confirmation. "It's all true," he said.

"Let's assume for a moment I believe all this. What's your plan?" said Ariadne.

"We've tried everything else," said Fischer. "I don't think you'll like it, but at this point..."

Mal looked down into her beer. "What Rob is too tactful to say is that the plan has a lot of risk," she said hesitantly. "We will go into Dom's dream and kill him when we find him. This should send him into limbo. Then we will follow him there and kill him again."

"But- wow," said Ariadne. "What if you can't find him right away? It could be _years_. What if you get lost down there?"

Mal said, "We accept the risks. If we succeed, it's worth it. If we fail… well, I'd rather be lost in a dream with him, than separate up here." There was a fierce determination in her eyes.

Fischer looked up and met Ariadne's eyes. It was the first sign of confidence he'd shown all night. He said, "We _will_ recover him from the dream."


	7. Chapter 7

Thanks Vashti, Fan Fan Girl,StrangeLittleSwirl, and AtlantisGirl2, and totallyPSYCHED! You are awesome.

* * *

"We _will _recover him from the dream…" The words echoed in Ariadne's head.

She sat on a grassy hillside with Cobb watching James and Philippa play tag. The children laughed and shrieked with delight. It was a languid, hazy late summer afternoon; the sound of cicadas and crickets filled the air and the slanting sunlight shimmered on the lake in the distance.

Ariadne deftly sketched the clean lines of a building in a moleskine notebook. She leaned on his shoulder and sighed. "It's so peaceful here," she said. "I'm glad for you."

He leaned in close. "You've made me a very happy man, do you know that?"

She smiled mischievously. "So you keep telling me."

He breathed the words into her ear. "Sometimes you need a little reminder." He nibbled her earlobe and trailed slow, lazy kisses down her neck. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

"Dom, sometimes I feel- I can't even begin to explain it. Unreal, maybe. Here, watch this." She pulled out the bishop and toppled it on the grass.

Cobb folded her into his arms and kissed her temple. "See? Nothing to worry about."

"Where are we now?" she said softly. "What's the name of this place?"

"The garden." They lapsed into a silence that stretched for an eternity.

* * *

Ariadne woke up at her desk in Paris. She had fallen asleep with her head on her arms over a stack of thesis papers. At least this seemed real- it was perfectly sane and logical for her room to be cluttered with books, coffee cups, and papers and decorated in all red. _This _was her life.

"What a crazy wish-fulfillment fantasy," she thought groggily. "Me and Cobb." She sat bolt upright. "Oh, _no_," she said aloud.

Ariadne felt for her totem and realized it was missing.

There was a knock on the door and her roommate poked her head in. She was a young Asian woman with a heart-shaped face and hair in a short bob. Ariadne glanced up from the desk. "Hey, Celia."

"Hey, girl. Is the thesis coming along? You haven't done anything but study the last few days."

Ariadne straightened her papers and surreptitiously searched for her totem again. "Ugh… yeah, but I've got to try and sleep better. I fell asleep at my desk again. I've been having really weird dreams, too."

Celia pouted. "Aww. Well, I've got coffee and American cartoons! Will that make you feel better?"

Ariadne smiled. "Can't hurt."

"So how close are you to finishing?"

"Well, I've been working straight through the last week… so I'd say maybe by my 25th birthday?"

"Ouch. Well, try not to take _too _long. We've still got that trip to Provence coming up."

Ariadne followed her out to the kitchen and helped herself to some coffee from the French Press. There was a stamped plane ticket on the kitchen table. It read "Ariadne Albert; Sydney - LAX; May 17th 2010." She glanced at the calender; today was the 18th. There was no return flight on the ticket.

Ren and Stimpy were blasting from the TV. Celia lounged on the couch with a bowl of cereal and a newspaper.

"Hey, by the way, you left the window open when you came in last night," said Celia.

"What? I didn't come in through the window."

Celia grinned. "I know, weirdo. I meant that you came in through the front door like a normal sane person, and then opened the window and went to bed." She discarded the front page of the paper. The face in the photograph was familiar.

"Hey, can I take a look at that?" Ariadne said.

"Go for it. I try to be a serious newspaper reader, but I'm not fooling anyone, you know? Here, let me keep the comics, though."

Ariadne stood and read the article with a deepening frown.

"Oil Magnate Found Dead

Tokyo, May 18th- Billionaire Ken Saito was found dead in his Shinjuku apartment early this morning. Saito was the owner and president of the massive Iwamura Oil corporation. It is unknown at this time whether foul play is involved. With the death of Saito and the breakup of Fischer Morrow, the world oil market is undergoing a massive shift. The Cobol Corporation has bought much of the remaining Fischer Morrow interests, and a Cobol representative has contacted the Iwamura board of trustees. Little is known of Cobol Corporation, which has operated through intermediaries in the past. What this means for the future of oil has yet to be seen…"

Celia laughed loudly at the TV and spilled her cereal. The comics fell all over the couch and the floor. Ariadne looked down at her and felt a sudden frisson. She pictured the same heart-shaped face, but with a look of intense determination and covered in blood. "_The glass walkway_," thought Ariadne, and slowly edged toward the door. "_She shot Arthur."_


	8. Chapter 8

"I'll be back," said Ariadne. "I'm just-." She rushed to the hallway and grabbed her red jacket.

Celia glanced up from the TV. "Want me to save you some coffee?"

"I probably won't be back til late. I have to-" she couldn't come up with a good excuse, so she ran out and shut the door behind her.

Ariadne walked quickly toward campus, fighting the nervous urge to look over her shoulder. She picked up the pace when she approached Professor Miles' office. She couldn't think of anybody better to answer her burning questions.

There was a sign taped to the door. "After more than twenty years of service, Professor Miles has taken a well-deserved retirement. Thesis students, please submit your portfolios to Professor Grant for evaluation."

Ariadne nervously paced in front of the door. There was a small folding mirror on the floor, which she pocketed as she re-read the sign. Of course Miles had gone to California to be with Cobb and the children. Which meant-

"I just need to think about this logically," she thought. She left the building and found a nearby bench, and pulled a small notebook and pencil from her jacket.

The scene changed around her. The trees lost their springtime flowers in an explosion of white petals and burst with summer leaves, which blazed into brilliant autumn oranges and reds. The sounds of passerby and cars merged and flowed together, and the distant tolling of a church bell was sped up so that it sounded like a heartbeat.

Ariadne was oblivious. With furrowed brows, she wrote:

"Miles gone to be with Cobb and children- Cobb's name cleared- therefore inception happened.

Totem created for Inception… if no totem, then inception did not happen. Totem now missing (or never existed.)

If no inception then no glass walkway shootout. Celia…?

Mal/ Fischer/ Yusuf (California?)- Details fit… possible. Me 26 yrs old? THAT's crazy.

Airplane- hotel - walkway- paris: continuity? (False or real awakening in apartment?)

No difference in totem =everything equally unreal or equally real. Experience of multiple equal realities, therefore dreaming? Determine if inception happened?"

A gust of wind lifted the paper out of her hand, and it danced down the sidewalk.

"Hey!" said Ariadne. ("That's how I know I'm going mad," she thought darkly. "Talking to a piece of paper."

A man emerged from seemingly nowhere. He caught the paper out of midair and strolled over.

"Excuse me, miss. Is this yours?"

Ariadne's eyes went wide. It was Robert Fischer.

She reached to take the paper from him. "Th-thanks."

He smiled warmly and extended a hand. "It's strange… I didn't see you there a second ago. I'm Rob. Beautiful day, isn't it? "

She studied him. There was something different here, a lightness about him she hadn't seen before. She wondered if this was the result of inception. For a moment, she thought of Rob and Mal, in that other dream, preparing to enter limbo and rescue Cobb.

She went with a straightforward approach. "Rob, is Mal here with you?"

"Pardon me? Have you mistaken me for someone else?" There was a look of genuine confusion on his face. He glanced over his shoulder.

"Wow, sorry. Yeah, I did."

"People often tell me I look like someone famous. But I'm just plain old me."

She smiled wryly at that. "Nice to meet you, Plain Old Rob. I'm Ariadne. Thanks for getting my paper."

He joined her on the bench. "Glad to. If it hadn't blown my way, I wouldn't have met you. So let me guess, you're a student?"

"We _are_ right next to a college."

He blushed. "I'm always putting my foot in it or stating the obvious."

She found his blush endearing and wanted to see it again. "And it's May," she said with a laugh. "Everyone and their mom is studying for finals right now."

He coughed and gestured around at the brilliant fall foliage. "It's… I mean. It's."

Her eyes went wide. "_Right. _It's fall," she said aloud. "How long has it been fall?" she murmured.

"Is everything all right?"

She heaved a sigh. "Just a bit distracted."

He hesitated. "Can I tell you something, Ariadne? I'm re-inventing my life right now," he said shyly.

She cocked an eyebrow. "Really?"

"My dad… he died just a little while ago. It woke me up to the fact that I'd never really lived, myself. I thought to myself, 'Rob, when's the last time you've walked around Paris, or talked to a pretty girl? When's the last time you got drunk?' I'm going to travel the world until I figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life."

She turned to fully look at him. "So are you happy?"

"I've been worse," he admitted. He smiled.

It started to get chilly and they walked to a nearby pub as dusk fell. The problem of Celia and the confusing last few days tugged at Ariadne's mind, but she wanted to prolong the conversation. She enjoyed his company, and was truly glad to see him happy. It made her feel less guilty about entering his head and re-arranging his thoughts.

The pub was warmly lit with hanging paper star lights, and the walls were a warm buttery yellow which contrasted with the comfortable mahogany furniture.

The waiter approached them. He was a young Indian man with a kind face, who was crisply dressed in slacks, a linen shirt, and a waistcoat." Good evening, can I take your order?" he said in French.

"I'll have the _moules frites, _and do you have any beer on tap?" said Ariadne.

"We have a pilsner and a wheat beer tonight."

"Great, I'll have the wheat beer. And the same for my friend… I don't think he speaks any French."

"I caught that last part," said Fischer in English.

Ariadne raised her eyebrows skeptically. "Oh? What did I say?"

"That I speak excellent French."

Ariadne rolled her eyes and giggled.

The waiter dropped off two tall, frosty beers with a small smile. Fischer said, "You know, I have the strangest feeling that I've seen that fellow before."

"Where?"

"I couldn't tell you. Déjà vu, I guess. You know what else? I sort of have the same feeling about you. Have we met each other somewhere before?"

Ariadne decided to test the waters. She lowered her voice. "What about multiple somewheres?"

Their eyes met and he studied her intently. His pupils dilated. "No," he muttered.

At that moment the waiter dropped off their mussels and fries.

"Anyway, it's great that you're learning French," she said too loudly and cheerfully.

"My godfather made me learn a little."

"Did it help?"

"It's a lot harder now that I'm traveling over here. I gave up my job to be here, and my godfather's pretty angry on my behalf. I do keep thinking about that."

"Why would he be angry?"

"He just wants the best for me, I think. I saw some papers on his desk; he's investigating the airline I took a few days ago and things I've done lately. I almost think he wanted me to see it."

_That _was news.

Ariadne took a sip of her beer and rested the glass in her hands as she pondered this. Saito's voice echoed in her head. "I bought the airline… it seemed neater." How modestly he had delivered that line. Now Browning was investigating that airline, and Saito was dead. She shuddered.

"I think you just dropped something," said Fischer.

It was the paper she'd been scribbling on. Ariadne picked up from the table. No, on closer inspection it was the little slip of paper that she'd taken from Dom Cobb's shirt. The very existence of that paper, _here, _was just startling and wrong.

"Can I have a moment?" said Ariadne. She turned to the side and with trembling hands unfolded the note. It was a musty scrap of paper torn from a book.

"Once in a while, the paths of that labyrinth converge: for example, you come to this house, but in one of the possible pasts you are my enemy, in another my friend."

There was an address scribbled in the margins.

Ariadne took another sip of beer. The curved surface of the glass caught reflections from around the restaurant. Ariadne thought she saw the reflection of a girl with dark touseled hair that fell into her dark eyes. The reflection looked up at Ariadne and winked. Ariadne turned and there was the girl, but she had her back turned toward her group at the bar.

At the end of the bar, the waiter was polishing wineglasses. Ariadne looked into her glass again and saw a reflection of him holding a small glowing star in his hand. In the reflection, shards of glass and ice exploded from the ground and sliced his face; he silently cried out and fell.

The girl in the glass beckoned urgently and offered her hand. Ariadne took it and stepped through.


	9. Chapter 9

She passed through a room that was the mirror image of the bar, except that the air was cloudy and amber-colored. It was very reminiscent of the beer she'd been drinking. Her movements were slowed, as if she were walking through water.

Ariadne walked past herself, nodding off at the bar next to a concerned-looking Robert Fischer who was shaking her arm. The dark-haired girl stood in the center of the room, smiling.

A man opened the door and wedged a chair against the doorknob to close it behind him. "Arthur!" exclaimed Ariadne.

He turned to face her. "You?" he said. He looked as shocked as she felt. He was impeccably dressed in a close-tailored suit; the fit made him look lean and catlike. She was suddenly struck by how little she knew about him.

"You were dead," she said, in an accusatory tone.

Arthur walked to the bar, poured himself a shot, and knocked it back. He extended a hand. "Dance with me."

"What?"

"'Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man.' Come on, we've got like thirty seconds, tops. Dance with me."

She took his hand and he pulled her in close. He placed his other hand on the small of her back. He led them in an old-fashioned waltz around the room.

"You're not going to kiss me?" she said quizzically.

"Do you want me to?"

They waltzed past the young waiter, who had a gaping cut across his face.

Ariadne glanced from Arthur to the waiter and was struck by a sudden realization. "I know where I've seen that guy before," she said.

"Suraj Venkatesh of Cobol Corp. I shot him," said Arthur conversationally. He spun and dipped her to end the dance, and she gasped.

There was a thud like a body hitting the door, but the chair held.

Across the room, the dark-haired girl waved her arms to get their attention and pointed to her watch. She seemed not to be able to talk, but made up for it with big gestures.

Arthur glanced from the girl to the door and spoke rapidly. "You're dreaming, right? You've been dreaming this whole time. The fact that I see you means I'm dreaming, too. I think I fucked up big time." A louder thud at the door. He glanced back nervously and loosened his tie, then made for the door to the kitchen.

Ariadne moved to follow him. "Maybe I can help you," she said.

He edged past her and glanced at the door again. "I don't think so. But if I see you again, I'll owe you one big explanation."

There was another thud and the door bent inward but didn't give. Arthur sprinted the last few steps to the door.

"Tell me what you mean!" said Ariadne. He dodged her and ran through the swinging doors.

"Hey!" she said. She ran after him and threw open the doors, then stopped abruptly. She teetered on the edge of an abyss that was full of stars, above, below, and all around her.

The mute girl pulled Ariadne back by her shoulder. "Thanks," said Ariadne. The girl raised her eyebrows and nodded appreciatively in the direction Arthur had gone.

"You're not kidding," said Ariadne. "You can't deny he's got style."

The girl gestured as if to say, "follow me." She climbed up on the bar, kicking aside a plate of food with the toe of her Chuck Taylors. She moved one of the ceiling tiles aside and pulled herself up. Ariadne followed.

Ariadne emerged in a grassy meadow with mist in the low-lying areas. It was dusk, and the meadow was crisscrossed with paths that branched and forked, half-hidden by the mist and the tall grass. There was a ceiling tile-sized hole in the ground that gave off an amber-colored glow. The girl from the bar was nowhere to be seen.

Ariadne chose a path at random and walked. Soon the field gave way to thicker and thicker trees, and eventually Ariadne was walking in a wood. The trees were strung with multicolored Christmas lights, but it was late summer or early fall. The misty air was tinged with a faint crisp coolness.

The path Ariadne walked on turned to a gravel driveway that crunched underfoot. There was a house at the end of the path that combined the rustic wood of a cabin with the sleek glass of a postmodern mansion. The windows spilled squares of cheerful yellow light into the deepening dusk.

There was a man fixing a car in the driveway by the light of the porch lamp.

"Cobb," she said softly.

* * *

(This scene was inspired by the short clip "The Bank Dance" with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. Check it out, it's awesome! I know I have this as a Cobb and Ariadne story and there's been lots of... everyone else and not much Cobb. There will be lots more of him coming up.)

I'm starting a playlist. Credit to Strangelittleswirl for the awesome idea! In this chapter, I imagine they're dancing to "Rococo" by The Arcade Fire.


	10. Chapter 10

Ariadne approached slowly, watching him. He was different now. His sleeves were rolled up and face was smudged; he looked relaxed and boyish. The windows of the house cast buttery yellow light on his face.

Inside the house, Miles was setting up for dinner. Philippa chased James through the kitchen and Miles scooped him up in his arms. Cobb leaned against the car and smiled at the happy scene.

Ariadne thought that maybe he spent a lot of time out here, just watching them. She needed to leave or say something. It wasn't right to stand here and watch him like this.

"Hey stranger," she said.

He looked up at her and froze. His hand paused in midair. She stepped closer and he slowly lowered his hand to the car.

"How did you find me here?" he said at last.

She stuck her hands in her pockets and scuffed the ground with her boot. "I didn't come here on purpose. Do you have time for a long story?"

He glanced toward the window. "Give me the cliff notes."

She laughed nervously. "I think I'm on a break from reality."

"In what way?" he said, crossing his arms.

She stepped closer and looked up at him searchingly. "I… _travel _from place to place. Without even trying. I was in a bar in Paris ten minutes ago, then I walked through a room that was a glass of beer, climbed up through a tile in the ceiling, and wound up here in the woods. I meet different versions of the same people." "_And Mal_," she thought.

He reached out as if to touch her, but seemed to think better of it and pulled his hand back. "Come in for dinner. We can talk about this once the kids are in bed."

"I have one big question." She pulled the note from her pocket and smoothed it out. "'Once in a while, the paths of that labyrinth converge: for example, you come to this house, but in one of the possible pasts you are my enemy, in another my friend.' What does that mean?"

"Coming from a surprise visitor, that's strangely relevant," he said dryly.

"It's your line. I found it in your pocket when you were asleep." There was a long moment of silence between them.

Suddenly he pushed her to the ground. They tumbled to the rough gravel behind the car. By the time she registered the noise of the gun, the bullet had already lodged in the wall behind her. He gripped her arm tightly; his hand was warm.

Their eyes met. "You were followed?" he said incredulously.

"I didn't know," she said.

"That's the whole point of a tail, you don't see them. You have to pay attention to your surroundings." He ran a hand through his hair. "My _kids _are in the house."

"I'll make a distraction. You get them out of here."

He nodded curtly and made a dash for the house. He kept low and ran in a zigzag pattern. Bullets lit up the ground behind him.

Ariadne imagined a grenade launcher and it appeared in her hands. For a second she thought of Eames, which made her smile.

A bullet ricocheted off the car and she fired a grenade in the direction of the gunfire. There was an explosion and a ball of flame. The night went eerily quiet.

There was a crunch of gravel ahead of her. She peered over the hood of the car but couldn't see anything in the fading light.

She heard a car's ignition and more gravel crunching further off in the woods, like the movement of a heavy object. Good. It was probably Cobb idling a car away from the house with Miles and the children. She scanned the area for movement again.

Something grabbed her arms from behind. The grenade launcher clattered to the ground. She elbowed the attacker in the hard in the gut and he cried out, clutching his stomach. She turned around and got a look at her him: a well-built young man with light brown hair and a neat beard. She recognized him.

She aimed a kick at his groin, but he caught her foot and hauled it upward. She fell hard on her back and frantically twisted to reach the weapon. He lightly kicked it away. She hooked her free foot around his ankle and he crashed to the ground.

She brought her thumbs to his eyes and applied pressure. He grabbed her wrists and pried her hands away. Keeping a firm grip on her wrists, he slowly stood.

"I don't want to hurt you," he said. There was the _zip_ of a silenced gunshot, and he crumpled to the ground.

Ariadne glanced down at the dead man. Half his face was gone. She felt sick.

Cobb stood on the porch holding a handgun. There was a heavy duffel bag slung over his shoulder.

"Come on, let's go," he said.

* * *

Tracks:

Zoe Keating- We Insist

Well, so far I've written ten chapters, and it's taken me longer to get to Cobb than I thought. I had the whole plot kind of blocked out before I started, and scenes that I thought would only be a paragraph or two turned into chapters. I also didn't update for like three months. Now I have everything through the ending in script form, just waiting to be turned into a readable story. If you're still reading, I really appreciate your patience!

(By the way, I manage a little gourmet store. We sell wine, cheese, fancy chocolate, and we do catering. Apparently people REALLY want this stuff during the holidays, so I've been putting in 60 hour weeks for about the last 3 months. D: It's been crazy, and I'm really sorry for the long break.)

I'm also going to go through and change a few things earlier in the story. Some of the lines seem clunky now that I go back and read them, and then there's that ham-fisted title drop. Hopefully I can get it all smoothed out.


	11. Chapter 11

Thanks for the lovely reviews! Strangelittleswirl, the dialog is always the hardest part for me. Larushka Evanovich, thanks and good eyes! I love Memoirs of a Geisha and had a great big crush on the Chairman.

By the way, here's an awesome fan video you should check out: "Must Be Dreaming" youtube .com/watch?v=kIslUG9rfrU Everything about this works on every level- the music gives it a sense of wonder and fun, plus the quick cuts and the little Mondrian squares- I can't stop watching.

* * *

Track: If These Trees Could Talk- Signal Tree

* * *

A light rain started to fall in the deepening dusk. The air was chilly and mist rose from the ground.

Cobb walked briskly to the car. "What's your strong suit: driving evasively or shooting?" he said.

Ariadne looked over her shoulder. "You don't think we got them all?"

"You're kidding, right?" They heard the distant sound of a car engine and swung into the passenger seat. "Executive decision. You drive. Just follow my simple instructions and we'll be fine."

She climbed the driver's seat. "Does this P.O.S. even run?" she said.

He looked at her reproachfully. "Just pull out of the driveway and make a left at the first road. Keep it just under fifty."

The car lurched forward and then settled into a smooth accelleration.

"Keep it under fifty… for better control of the vehicle, right?" said Ariadne.

He unzipped the duffel bag and pulled out a small pistol, which he handed to her before selecting a shotgun for himself. The bag was full of weapons. "That, and we want to keep them on our tail without being caught. We need to lead them away from Miles and the children."

The car hit a bump and Cobb glanced over his shoulder. Headlights appeared behind them. "They're following," he said. "Take the next exit to the freeway. Try to keep their headlights just barely in sight."

His phone beeped and he flipped it open. "Yes? Good. Keep heading south. We'll lead them north. And…" his voice softened. "Give James and Philippa my love. I will. All right. Bye."

He shut the phone with a snap and Ariadne looked at him fearfully. The rain fell harder, and there was a tense moment where the only sound was windshield wiper blades. She gripped the steering wheel and merged onto the highway.

He said, "I cannot _believe_ that you led Cobol to my house… to my children! Do you have any idea-"

She bit back a scathing reply and chewed on her lip. Cobb and Arthur were somehow wrapped up in Cobol and reality was splintering around her. How did those two things relate?

A black sportscar sped up behind them and there was a spray of gunfire. Ariadne swerved and the car screeched against the guard rail, sending up a shower of sparks.

"Hey, fearless leader?" said Ariadne. "Do you have a plan?" There was an edge in her voice.

Cobb rolled down the window and fired at a minivan behind them. The front tire popped and the car went into a wild skid, blocking two lanes of traffic. "Cut off that blue sedan," he said, and ducked back into the car. "And speed up to 80. We need more space."

An overturned truck lay across all four lanes ahead of them. She slammed on the brakes. "Damn it!" he said. He reached over her and cut the wheel hard to the left. The wheels skidded on the wet pavement and the car swung in an arc into oncoming traffic.

"Foot on the gas!" he said. She floored it and the tires squealed. She swerved to avoid an oncoming car.

"Jesus!" she said. She gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles.

"Nice bootlegger turn," he said, sounding winded. She was driving up the middle of two lanes. Other drivers on the road were pulling onto the shoulder and honking.

The black sports car cut across traffic and drove right at them. Ariadne didn't hesitate. She drove a at them in a collision course. She felt blinded but it was just the headlights. _This is what it looks like when you die_, she thought.

Cobb kept low inside the window, pumped the shotgun, and fired. The other car's windshield fractured into a cobweb of broken glass but didn't break. The other car jerked and went into a tailspin, scraping against their fender and making them fishtail. Ariadne straightened it out and sped up the shoulder, leaning forward in her seat.

She looked over and gave him a small smile. "I thought that was it for us," she said.

"We're not in the clear yet," said Cobb. He tossed the shotgun into the back seat, pulled out another, and glanced behind them.

"They're still following?" she said. He nodded once, curtly.

They drove past homes and office buildings and the road took on a gradual incline. Ahead of them was a complex interchange of higheays and ramps, like a giant cement knot rising out of the landscape. There was a fork ahead and Ariadne merged to the left. The road looped gently, steadily rising until they were on level with the third or fourth floor of the buildings around them.

"Well, that's what we want, right?" she said. "We need them to follow us so they won't follow Miles?" She checked the rearview mirror and saw a black sportscar merge over and follow them, followed by a grey sedan. They were now on the right lane, separated from the drop by a thin metal guardrail.

"Right," he said distractedly, scanning the road in the rearview. "That means we need to threaten them enough that they use all their resources to deal with us. But I'd like to take at least one of them hostage so we can talk in person."

Ariadne shivered. She knew he meant torture, but he said it so dispassionately. When she looked over, his jaw was set and there was a tension line between his eyebrows.

The sportscar behind them was gaining. Cobb rummaged in the duffel bag and pulled out a grenade. "Can you stay in the interchange? Keep them on our tail, but confuse them. Stay in this lane for now.

She merged left as he pulled out the pin of the grenade with his teeth. The sportscar was about thirty feet behind them now. He threw it out the window and it bounced on the pavement a few times before the sportscar slammed on the breaks. The explosion lifted the front of the car and the momentum sent it through the guardrail.

Ariadne narrowed her eyes and clenched her jaw. The last thing they needed was the driver falling apart during a high-speed chase. But the violence affected her. She tried to swallow and couldn't.

The road divided again and she took the right fork. It turned into a small one-lane ramp that wound around the outside of the knot of highway. Two more cars followed. Ariadne sped up and the road looped around in a way that rose and fell at the same time.

They were behind the pursuit.

"What the-?" he said. The other car fired at them from up ahead and she jerked the wheel to the left. The windshield shattered, sending shards of broken glass everywhere.

"It's a Penrose highway," she gasped. "Are you hit?"

His eyes widened for just a fraction of a second and he shook his head. She could almost see the wheels in his mind working as he grasped the implications and pushed it to the back of his mind to deal with the problem at hand.

"Right," he said hoarsely. "I need you to hit that car's bumper from the left side and force it into a spin. Can you do that?"

"Watch me." She put on a burst of speed and slammed into the other car, which went into a tailspin on the wet pavement- right at them. The headlights loomed large over them and the light washed out everything.

A shot rang out and the other car slammed into them, sending them over an edge that wasn't there a second ago. "_They can build too," _she thought distantly, and slumped over the steering wheel. She dimly registered that she'd been shot. It was an abstract feeling, as if it had happened to someone else.

The car tumbled over an embankment. Cobb's arms were around her as he tried to regain control of the vehicle. "Ah God! Goddamn it!" he cried, anguished. He held her tightly and braced for impact.

"Cobb, what's the garden?" she said softly. Her voice echoed in her own head as the world went white. She felt weightless, even though the ground was getting bigger and bigger ahead of them.

_Slam._


	12. Chapter 12

There was a jumbled impression of violence and upheaval. The world lurched and she felt a sharp pain. She saw a bright light refracted in a handful of scattered diamonds, which moved in and out of focus.

The rolling surf pounded over her and she gasped when she broke the surface. The beach was shaded by the tall buildings up ahead, and the foamy breakers were a cool, shady blue. A few last wandering rays of sunlight glinted off the waves in pale yellow. There was a light breeze in the salty sea air.

She looked up at the rows of crumbling skyscrapers and Cobb's voice echoed in her head. "Washed up on the shore of your own subconscious…"

She knew this place, but it was different. The ground was curved, like standing in the bottom of a giant bowl. The ocean and the buildings followed the contours of the curve. The horizon was a gentle concave dip, and the curved buildings leaned out over the curved ground. The tiger-striped clouds up above fanned out from the lowest point on the horizon.

She walked forward and the road followed a gradual boomerang shape to the left. A lurking shadow darted between the buildings and she shuddered and quickened her pace.

In the place where Mal's childhood house would have been, there was a grassy lawn with a granite plinth in the center. A memorial.

The road ended at a gravelly lot and a low brick wall with the rungs of a ladder going over the edge. Up ahead was a sheer drop with to a green, gently sloping valley and distant, impossibly high snow-capped mountains under a clear blue sky. She looked over the edge and saw sleek glassy windows below her, like the wall of an office building. For every five-story drop, there was a little terrace about three feet wide. An Escher waterfall zig-zagged up and down the terraces, and the mist from the falls glinted in the sunlight.

"This looks like something I would've made," she said aloud. The words echoed in the stillness.

Out across the empty space, a gondola in the shape of a paper crane approached, slowly flapping its wings. It pulled up to the low wall and Ariadne climbed in. The interior was plush and cozy, a round little jewel box of a room with cherry-paneled walls and two benches upholstered in red velvet. There were two facing doors outlined in gold filigree.

She expected to slowly float across the valley, but the other door swung open on its own and she was there. She stood at the top of the highest mountain she had seen from the other side of the valley. Behind her, a low-hanging sun was setting over the valley. The clouds spiraled out from a point on the horizon, and Ariadne realized that the space here was curved, too.

There was a high water mark worn into the stone at her feet. Fossilized shellfish jutted out from the mountainside where the wind and rain had worn away the earth. Ariadne leaned down and picked up a nautilus shell the size of a dinner plate.

_Cyclical and linear at the same time, _she thought. She felt on the verge of an epiphany- if she could just remember one thing, all the puzzle pieces would fall into place.

The wind was the only sound.

A path wound its way up and around the mountain. Framed pictures and bookshelves jutted out of the earth like boulders, and Ariadne gasped softly when she saw that the first one was herself. In the portrait, she was floating with her eyes closed, just below the surface of the water. She shuddered.

The bookshelves were full of leatherbound journals. She leafed through one of them and saw that it was full of sketches: herself, at all different ages, sometimes sharp-eyed and alert, sometimes vacant and glassy; abstract drawings of swirls or branches; Dom Cobb, looking wistful, content, or determined; and a dark-eyed woman she didn't know.

Ariadne remembered how she used to sketch her teammates when they weren't looking during stolen moments in the warehouse. She was the most proud of one of her drawings of Cobb. In the drawing, his face was in profile and his jaw was set. He'd caught her drawing him once and given her a rare smile.

As she walked up the path she saw more portraits, a few doorways, and bookshelves. Every book she opened was full of portraits drawn with the same firm, clean lines. Ahead in the distance, there was a house at the top of the mountain.

A door ahead of her opened and a dark-eyed woman stepped out.

"Hey, I know you," said Ariadne.

"You," said the woman.

"The bar in Paris, right?"

The woman nodded and smiled. She looked maybe twenty-five or thirty and wore simple, sandy-colored clothes. She was barefoot, and her hair was damp with sea water.

They fell into step together and walked up the hill. "Did you make all this?" said Ariadne.

The woman smiled and pointed at Ariadne.

"Me?" said Ariadne, surprised. She frowned. "You don't talk much, do you? What's your name?"

The woman furrowed her brow. The two of them reached the house. The door was ajar and they walked into a spacious room with hardwood floors and a row of picture windows along each wall. It was set up as an artist studio, with clay sculptures, easels, models and supplies set up all over. There was a thick layer of dust over everything.

The sun was setting over the valley to the left. To the right, there was a short stretch of sand dunes and scrubby pines, then a rocky beach under a bright mid-day sun. The rolling surf sounded like an impossibly slowed-down heartbeat.

There was an easel with a half-finished picture set up next to a mirror. Without thinking about it, Ariadne picked up a piece of charcoal and started to draw. She sketched quickly and fluidly; she'd drawn these laugh lines and crows' feet thousands of times before. The picture was a self portrait, herself at sixty years old.

She gasped and dropped the charcoal. It rolled in the dust on the floor.

"I remember," she said. She felt dizzy and the world lurched sideways.

The handful of scattered diamonds moved in and out of focus again. Ariadne took deep slow breaths; there was a raw, insistent pain spreading over her chest. She was laying on her back on wet pavement, with her head turned to the side so that everything was sideways. A car's headlights sparkled in the tiny shards of glass strewn over the road.

She raised herself up on one elbow and a wave of nausea and chills washed over her. There were footsteps around her and a drag mark in the ground, as if someone had pulled her and then left her there. About twenty feet away was an overturned car. Fluid dripped from the car- _gasoline!- _and Cobb was unconscious in the passenger seat with a trickle of blood running from his hairline.

A surge of adrenaline washed over her and she stumbled to her feet and ran unsteadily to the car. The pain faded to a distant pinprick. The roof of the car was crumpled like tinfoil at the windshield, leaving only a six inch gap. She kicked out the window of the passenger seat, undid Cobb's seatbelt, and pulled him through the window. She dragged him by his arms but had to stop every few feet. He was heavy and she started to feel cold and numb.

* * *

Music:

At the beach: Caribou- Bowls

At the wreck: Amon Tobin- At the End of the Day

Thanks so much for the reviews, Voldemort's Spawn, Larushka Evanovich, and Strangelittleswirl! It's such an awesome surprise to see all this feedback.

I'm not sure this chapter's working for me. It's given me lots of headaches, but the story's getting to the point where it's time to start tying up all the loose ends. The next two chapters should be lots of fun and I'm really looking forward to them.


	13. Chapter 13

She walked along an underground path and breathed in the cool misty air. A stream ran alongside the twisting path, and phosphorescent algae lit the cave in a cool, diffuse glow.

There was a brighter light up ahead. The passage turned a corner and suddenly widened into a chamber as big as a football stadium. Misty sunlight streamed in through a hole in the ceiling; the opening was hung with vines and the chamber was full of trees, half-hidden in the mist.

The stream gently widened out into a pool. There was a young Asian woman sitting cross-legged next to it, looking into the water. She was barefoot and wore a sweater and jeans that were ripped at the knee. Ariadne walked closer.

"Celia?" said Ariadne. "What are you doing?"

"Ariadne!" Celia stood and pulled her into an quick, breathless hug. "What are you doing here?"

They separated and Ariadne held her at arm's length. "I'm completely confused," she said.

Celia leaned out over the water and frowned. "There's a fork up ahead, and I can't figure out which way to go. I'm looking for answers in this scrying pool."

Ariadne stood next to her and looked into the pool. The bottom was mossy and small fish swam in the clear water. The trees and a hint of sky were reflected in the water. Whatever visions of the future might be in there, Ariande couldn't see them.

"I never believed in the supernatural," said Ariande. "You should just pick which way to go from gut instinct. That's more your style."

Celia picked up a flat rock and skipped it across the surface. "My style? We've known each other a long time in this path."

Ariadne scrutinized her. "We met in our sophomore year of undergrad, right?"

Celia sat and crossed her legs. "I remember that, but I also have all these other memories that- things I can't explain. We cross paths and every time I see you you're totally different. Sometimes it seems like you're my enemy, and you're dangerous."

"It's mutual. Come on, let's get out of here."

Ariadne gave her a hand up and Celia brushed herself off. They walked to the fork in the road.

"What's 'this path'?" said Ariadne.

"It's my nickname for all the weird stuff going on. I meet different versions of people and go through the same event in different ways. It reminds me of 'A Garden of Forking Paths.'"

"Didn't Borges say it would be impossible to actually read that? You say we're experiencing it?"

"Yeah. It's a bummer."

Ariadne looked at her shrewdly. "So which way are you going?"

Celia hesitated. "I can't pick one."

"Why not?"

"I lost my friends. I think if I choose one path, I'll be permanantly cut off from the other. If I go the wrong way I might never see them again."

Ariadne frowned and shook her head. It felt like there were cobwebs in her brain. "What if all the possibilities happen at once?

Celia looked up. "Has weird stuff been happening to you, too?"

"Yeah. Do you have any theories?

"I can't- I can't remember. It has something to do with a project."

"You're _right. _But I don't know why." Ariadne paced. The only sound was the running water.

"Well, I'm going left," Ariadne said at length. "Let me know if you remember anything else."

Celia let out a shaky breath. "Yeah. If you're not trying to _kill _me." She paused. "I'm going right."

Ariadne laughed nervously. "Take care, okay?"

Ariadne took the left fork and the passage narrowed again. Here and there sunlight filtered in through small holes in the ceiling, and plants grew in the sunlight. The ground was wet and gravelly.

The path ran under a waterfall. Behind the waterfall, there was a wooden door with a brass knob.

She walked through and entered a sleek postmodern loft. A wall of windows let in the pale morning light, and lone pieces of furniture stood here and there like mesas out of a desert of concrete floor. There was a man standing with his back to her, wearing pressed slacks, loafers, and a crisp shirt. Casual, for him.

"Arthur?"

Arthur almost dropped the coffeepot he was holding. Hot coffee slopped over the edge and he cursed as he set it down. He ran cold water over his hand and fumbled in the drawer for a bandage.

He turned to face her and gestured expansively. "Me," he said, with a cheeky grin.

"No projections chasing you today?"

His smile faltered. "Beg pardon?"

"The last time I saw you-"

"-Was at LAX, Ariadne," he said gently. "How did you get into my apartment? What are you doing in New York?"

She pointed behind her. "I came in through that door."

He pulled open the door; it was a pantry. He raised his eyebrows.

"I can't explain it," she said with a shrug.

"Is this a lead-in to a job? I assume you put me under," he said smoothly. He moved his hand to the side; she saw now that he hadn't burnt his hand at all, but there was a gun in his pocket that hadn't been there a second ago.

She took a step back and raised her hands.

"I know you're not armed, Ariadne. Let's talk. I don't mean that as a threat, I just want to talk."

Ariadne backed up. "So shoot. Figuratively, not literally."

Arthur closed the space between them; she was very aware of how close he was. She gulped and her heart pounded in her chest.

He said, "I went into hiding after the job and bought this place under an assumed name. I did a lot to cover my tracks. How did you find me?"

"Like I said. I just walked in through that door." She edged away from him. "Do you have time for a long story?"

He flashed his dimples. "Do you have time for coffee?"

They stood facing the windows, which gave them a panoramic view of early morning Manhattan. Ariadne wrapped her hands around the warm coffee mug and curled her toes against the cold cement floor, and she told Arthur everything.

Arthur's fingertips rested between her shoulderblades, and her skin tingled at the contact. Her breath hitched. She stepped back.

He rubbed his chin. "Not that I believe any of this, but the part that bothers me the most is all those self-portraits you drew."

"I didn't draw them. I just found them."

"Can you tell the difference between a portrait and a self-portrait?"

"Yeah. The subject appears to be making eye contact with you... oh, shit."

"Why would there be self-portraits of yourself at sixty?"

"The only way I could have aged like that is if I'd spent the time in limbo. But wouldn't I remember it?"

"I don't know. I've never been."

"I have the feeling, Arthur- I've got this impression that I was there as a custodian. Or I was catalouging them."

He fetched the coffeepot and refilled her coffee. "Well, run with it. Why would you do such a thing?"

She scrunched her eyebrows. "It's my subconscious. I'd want to keep it tidy."

"Why would you spend forty years doing that?"

"I think it was longer... maybe much longer. I just liked being sixty, so I stayed that way."

"How long do you think?"

"I'm not sure. Ow!" She curled over, clutching her chest, and coughed violently into her hand. The hand came away red.

"Jesus!" said Arthur. He rushed to her side with a wet towel and wiped her face. "You need a hospital."

Her face was pale. "Well, I'm not going. I'd be a sitting duck there."

He nodded grimly and helped her sit with her back to the wall. "I know a little field medicine, but I can't do anything for internal bleeding."

"It's not a real injury. I was shot in another dream level." She closed her eyes and breathed deeply and slowly. "I feel a little better now, thanks." She held out her hands and he helped her up.

"Back to my first question, then."

She shook her head. "I can only guess."

"So guess."

"Maybe I didn't want them to be forgotten. I must have been moved by them."

"Why would that be?"

"I must have thought the subjects were real." She had a flash of memory- a cliff and seagulls, a kind word and a small push. The impression that she was doing the merciful thing. "I wish I could remember more."

"Maybe you will in time."

Ariadne wrapped her arms around herself. "Arthur... I'm pretty fucked up."

Arthur set down his coffee and folded her into his arms. "Everyone is, in their own special way."

They broke apart. "Yeah. I'm pretty special, then."

"So what's your next move?

"I don't know, but I Cobb needs my help. I have to get back to him."

Arthur's hand instinctively twitched toward his gun, and his eyes flicked to the doors and windows. "Cobol," he muttered. He caught himself and picked up his coffee. "Is there anything I can do?"

"Keep your eyes peeled, and-" she laughed ironically. "Don't lose yourself."

"Goodbye, Ariadne. I hope you figure out your maze."

She went to leave and he touched her shoulder. She turned to face him, a puzzled look on her face, and he pulled her in for a quick kiss.

"One for the road. Good luck."

She woke up with a gasp. She under a highway overpass with a large drainage tunnel behind her. Cobb was asleep or unconscious in her arms. His outer jacket was missing, and she realized that in the night, someone had patched her wound with strips of denim.

It was an early morning, sunny and golden, with mist in the low-lying places. There was a slight chill in the air and the sunlight in the mist made the air seem to shimmer.

During the night a field of wildflowers had grown all around them, nodding and heavy with dew. Vines and flowers had overtaken the twisted and blackened wreck of the car.

Cobb's breathing was shallow and there was a gash above his hairline, but he was alive. He looked boyish in his sleep, but the tension lines were still there between his eyebrows. She pushed the hair back from his temple and thought about kissing his forehead.

He began to stir.

"Hey, stranger," he said hoarsely.

She breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh, great, an ironic echo. Is my face moving in and out of focus?"

"Yes."

She helped him sit up and he leaned on her for support. "Are you feeling any confusion, any dizzyness?"

He rubbed his forehead. "Obviously."

"Cobb, I'm going to get help."

She started to stand and he clasped her wrist. "The hell you are."

"I'm not in any pain. There's no reason I can't go."

"Do I need to remind you that _you've been shot_? You're shivering. You lost a lot of blood and you're probably in shock."

"Yeah, well _you _have a concussion."

"…Christ." He stood unsteadily and offered her a hand. His hand was warm and calloused. Maybe they were both a little shaken; they didn't let go.

"Neither of us is sound of body or mind, so we go together?"

"You got it."

"Where are we, anyway?"

He looked around them at the field of flowers, swaying in the early morning breeze. "I would say northern California."

"...But?"

"My best guess? We're deep in the subconscious."

They set off across the field, hand in hand.

* * *

The cave- Magic Spells- Crystal Castles

Arthur's apartment- John Fruisciante- Murderers

The field- Sufjan Stevens- Futile Devices

The cave exists in real life. Check out Soong Goong cave in Vietnam... it's got a forest, a river, and even little clouds inside. Crazy.

Sorry for the long wait, and then the long chapter- work has been so stressful lately that it's the only thing I have "brain space" for. (My vacation starts today, though!) My other fics here don't really take "brain space" the way this one does. As for the little moment between Arthur and Ariadne, I really like push/pull. Every time something goes one way, I have to balance it with something opposite. So as Ariadne and Cobb become closer, Arthur steps up his game. It's just what I thought he would do.


End file.
